5/24/2026

 Sunday, May 24, 2026

1983 The Supreme Court ruled that the government can deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate against students

2020 The New York Times printed its front page with nearly 1,000 names of people who have died from COVID-19, as the US toll nears 100,000

2025 At least 79 Palestinians are killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, including nine of a doctor's ten children. (AP)

In bed at 9, awakened @ 19:30 by text exchange with DPL, awake at 5:45, up at 6:15; 0630 137/79/59 120 2005.4; 53/70/52, cloudy & rainy  

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m., half-dose of Bisoprolol at.6:55 a.m.

What a blessing it is to be able to open the blinds on the window next to my recliner and to see the birds and other creatures feeding.  Always the chickadees, doves, finches, sparrows, and now often an oriole or even a bluebird.  I thrill on seeing the birds raiding our big cotton ball for their nests.  On the ground, a gray squirrel and a chipmunk are taking their fill.  I use the ground as another feeder needing replenishing each day.  Yesterday afternoon, I saw a bunny surveying Geri's garden between the patio and the house.  For some reason, we haven't been visited recently by the turkeys and whitetail deer, but they're never far away.  I find Scotsman's Danny O'Neill's poem:

The Blessing of Being Ordinary

Morning arrives quietly, like a kind hand smoothing a rumpled sheet.
I breathe once.
The world feels patient.

A sparrow lifts from a fence and becomes a simple lesson in acceptance.
Nothing remarkable in its flight, yet the sky seems to welcome it with soft approval.
I watch.
That is enough.

The day opens its small doors.
Light pours across the floor, not in triumph, but in steady kindness.
It reminds me that greatness often hides in gentleness.
It reminds me that gentleness is a strength.

I walk through my ordinary life as though it were a garden tended by invisible care.
One step.
Another.
The earth holds everything without complaint.
So I let it hold me too.

Sometimes I think the quiet moments are beads slipped onto a thread of time, each one shining for the briefest second.
I touch them with my attention.
They stay.

A cup of tea warms my hands.
Its steam rises like a soft hymn.
This is what peace tastes like when the world asks for nothing more than my presence.

I learn again that the humble is holy.
That the uncelebrated has its own quiet brilliance.
That ordinary days are the true teachers of gratitude.

So I stand still.
I listen.
The heart steadies itself in the rhythm of simple things.
A breeze.
A footstep.
A thought slipping calmly into silence.

If there is a blessing here, it is this:
To be alive in a way that asks for no applause.
To belong to the moment without effort.
To find contentment resting lightly in the palms of today.

And so I give thanks, not as an act of ceremony, but as a natural breath.
Life is enough.
I am enough.
The ordinary shines.

The world conspires against the kind of moments about which O'Neill writes.  The television is a co-conspirator, as are the newspapers and the internet.  Yet each morning, after being lifted by the birds and the critters, after filling in the regulars of my journal (sleep data, weigh-in data, weather data, and morning meds), I turn to the headlines of the NY Times to discover whether the world has blown up overnight.  I do a quick check of the headlines before turning on Morning Joe to listen to Joe's rants, Mika's tsk-tsking, and whatever knowledgeable analysis is being offered that morning.  I know I'm a fool.

I picked up my new Samsung tv at Costco this afternoon.  When I got home, Geri and Ellis had returned from their adventure to IKEA and they helped me set it up.  Actually, Ellis schlepped the 43" tv from the Volvo into my bedroom as if it weighed just a couple of pounds.  She also did much of the set up with the remote.  She is 11 years old and is much more at home set up this smart tv than either Geri is or I am.  It's going to take me some time of messing around with it to become familiar with both the tv and the remote.  Already, I can't get it to pair with or recognize my Bluetooth earpods.  I'll have to put poor Sarah to work on it when she visits on 6/13 or 14.  Watching Geri and myself flailing about trying to set up the tv while Ellis was right at home was pretty entertaining..

SOB and light-headedness.  Both are definitely getting worse.  Is it the CHF or the Bisoprolol?  or the ventricular tachycardia/bradycardia?  Perhaps NP Maggie Angeli will have some answers on Thursday, but I doubt it.   

Anniversary, memories: the NYTimes front page.  How well I remember it and those terrible days, and Donald Trump's 'happy horseshit' about the pandemic just 'going away' in the summer.